keywords: Neoliberalism

Inequality is not an aberration that comes with neoliberalism. It is the foundation of neoliberalism, along with its partners in social crime: patriarchy and colonisation. As Sharan Burrow, the Australian General Secretary of the ITUC, puts it so poignantly: 'We live in a fragmented world.' The excluded form the majority across the globe.

A key benefit asserted to justify treating water as an economic good is that the market will encourage 'high-value' water use to be prioritised. But, as the fish of the Darling River and the people of Walgett are experiencing, the problem with commodifying water is its social and environment values are not naturally reflected in the market.

Airborne pollution is an issue of environmental justice, because it disproportionately affects those with the least capacity to move — the poor, the marginalised, and those, such as Indigenous peoples, with a significant relationship to place.

If we say the man's lost his mind, we must, in fairness, acknowledge that he possessed a mind to lose. Bizarre as the notion now sounds, Latham brought consider intellectual firepower to the Labor leadership. His deep commitment to free market policies meant his hostility to Hanson always came as much from the right as the left.

So here is a question. Which are you? A customer, a shareholder, a worker, a citizen, or, well, a whole human being? If you answered 'customer' then congratulations, you are in line with contemporary economic orthodoxy, and boy, have we got a society for you. If you answered 'a human being' then that really is a problem, I'm afraid.

We are already suffering from the effects of global warming and the intensification of extreme weather events, and things are going to get worse. The question now is what we do to both limit the damage and adapt to the inevitable. Fortunately many of the actions that we must take will actually make our lives better.

In light of the evidence, a national energy policy prioritising renewables should be uncontroversial. But is seems ideology is impermeable to evidence. Instead, we have the government continuing to try to pressure AGL into keeping the Liddell coal-fired power plant open despite clear-cut economic and environmental reasons for its closure.

When Parliament resumes on 10 September, I hope Morrison leaves his lump of coal at home and takes his Christian values to work. He could start by adopting a 2030 emissions reduction target of at least 50 per cent below 2005 levels and ensuring that environmental considerations are central to all future development approvals.

This was always the natural endpoint of the constant see-saw of leadership: some guy who nobody knows and nobody likes being thrust into the top job by a panicked backbench. Like all great decisions of world-historical significance, it's out of fear of losing their own seats than any particular vision for the country.

It is all too easy to make daily choices that negatively affect the environment, and there are many incentives for us to do so — cost, time, social norms. This is where policies like plastic bag bans come in — they change the incentives and not only help us to do the right thing but also to normalise it within our culture.

Grieving the death of a tree seems a common experience, but I had rarely heard about it. We share stories of the loss of loved ones or pets, but not of specific trees. Are we less comfortable acknowledging the depth of this relationship? Does it challenge our cultural understanding of the natural world and our place within it?

Just in time to arrest ponderous musings about Western Civilisation, up jumps Denniss' cheeky funeral oration for the neoliberal settlement. His target is the assumption that an economy based on unregulated competition between individuals will benefit society. He does not spend time arguing with the theory, but points to the results.